News travels. Thanks to you.

And, oh sh*t. Dave Barry's on Substack.

Publishing News:

The preorders are rolling in. The buzz is growing. The word is getting out. In no small part because of you!

See what the Los Angeles Wire has to say about Bottom of the Breath, recommended as a top beach read for 2025:

I also want to give a well-deserved shout-out to my friend, author Lorna Graham, whose upcoming release, Where You Once Belonged, is also highlighted in the article, along with the latest from Rachel Lynn Solomon and Emily Henry. Congrats ladies! I look forward to reading your books.

On birthdays and aging:

So. . . I celebrated a birthday since my last post. In my upcoming book, Cyd says (and I believe)

. . . about birthdays, “Every one’s a gift.”

(I’m sorry to keep mentioning my upcoming (July 8, 2025!) book in these posts, but according to my publicist—yes, I actually have a publicist now!—I need to sprinkle it in, so I’m sprinkling.)

With my daughter, Valerie, at our fave pizza spot in Colorado Springs. Shout out to Slice 420!

Next stop, The Broadmoor, for some birthday bubbly.

Some thoughts on birthdays and words to live by from my good friend, Dave Barry:

“You can only be young once. But you can always be immature.”

“You can say whatever you want about aging, but it's still the only way to have old friends."

(You may not want to actually live by these words, but they are funnier than anything I could come up with about birthdays and aging, so I copied them off ChatGPT.)

On humor (or not):

As I alluded to in the title of this post, here’s what I think about my good friend Dave Barry’s new Substack:

Oh, sh*t. Dave Barry’s on Substack. Now I have to try to be funny.

In all honesty, Dave Barry is not my good friend. Not yet, anyway, but you never know. Stranger things have happened, like—(note to self, insert something funny here about something strange that happened to me.)

I found this image searching for “Dave Berry images.” According to Getty Images, there are “5436 Dave Barry Photos and Hi Res Pictures.” 5436!! Impressive, Dave! (This one came up second.)

I know I shouldn’t let Dave’s new Substack get me down. I’ve read Dave Barry for decades, centuries maybe, and always get a good chuckle. And now, just when I was sure he was dead, he pops up on my Substack Reads email, alive and well and writing fabulously funny posts.

Of course, I subscribed immediately. Me and a bazillion other people. I love Dave, but I can’t help but be envious when I compare my faithful but small subscriber base to his immediately immensely large one, even though I know such comparisons are unhealthy, serve no purpose whatsoever, and could possibly even be— (note to self, insert something funny here having to do with unhealthy, useless obsessions.)

I also couldn’t help but notice that lots of Dave’s very funny and equally famous friends are not only subscribing to Dave’s new Substack but also sharing and commenting on Dave’s hilarious posts. Posts that probably roll off Dave’s writerly fingertips like— (note to self, need more funny stuff here, too.)

I thought maybe I’d try to engage with Dave. Maybe I’d ask a question on Dave’s “Notes” section and see if he or any of his fabulously funny subscriber friends answer me and inadvertently send lots of traffic to my heartfelt but not particularly funny Substack.

Something like:

Hey, Dave. Do you think it’s bad form to buy expensive down pillows, use them for a week at an Airbnb, and then return them? Just wondering what your thoughts are on this.

(Yes, I did this recently, but the Airbnb pillows were so bad, and I did use pillowcases, and I swear I didn’t drool.)

But now that I re-read this question, I think it makes me sound like a borderline nutcase, which could work against my effort to onboard Dave as an actual friend unless he secretly prefers borderline nutcases to fabulously funny famous friends, which I highly doubt.

Let’s try another one:

Hey, Dave. You’re so incredibly funny. Do you have any advice for a new writer who has no natural talent for comedy and very little for general post-writing either and yet, in this day and age, must keep coming up with enticing, original, non-political things to write about so that, as my publicist keeps reminding me, I can stay relevant and engaged with my potential readers? What do you think counts as engagement, Dave? How do you stay so relevant when, in actuality, you are not writing about anything very relevant at all unless one counts Viagra-selling car washes or hotel showers?

I’ll keep brainstorming this before I actually write to Dave and report back. In the meantime, you could go to Dave Barry’s new Substack yourself and subscribe along with the gazillion other people who already have and see what you think. You’ll probably hear the roar of laughter coming off the screen the moment you open any one of Dave’s sidesplitting posts.

Then you try and write a post as funny as Dave’s and see if you don’t find it a bit depressing. Exhausting even. (I’m exhausted, and I haven’t even finished writing one, and I know, it’s not even that funny.)

Or, more likely, you’ll just be tired from laughing out loud the entire time you’re reading one of Dave’s effortlessly hilarious and insightful Substack posts.

What I’ve learned, thanks to Dave and his new Substack, is that trying to be a funny writer is even more exhausting than trying to be an ordinary, halfway-decent writer.

And by that, I mean— (oh, to hell with it. I could dwell on it for years, and I’ll still have nothing witty to insert here or anywhere else. Who am I kidding?)

I think I’ll just let Dave be the funny Substack guy, and I’ll be the mildly envious, slightly defeated, and just plain not funny Substack gal.

At least I’ve found my lane.

Thanks for your help, Dave. Welcome to Substack.

That’s it for today. Thanks, as always, for being here. And remember. . .

Life is short. Read fast.

From one lover of the written word to another,

With love,

Jayne

Coming July 8, 2025! Bottom of the Breath is the story of a woman catapulted from her tranquil life on the Florida panhandle onto a cross-country road trip with her recently estranged husband. She must outrun a hurricane, digest a shocking, decades-old family secret, and come to terms with her own pain-filled past. Laced with mysticism and set among the majesty of Sedona and the Grand Canyon, the novel explores the power of friendship, the importance of forgiveness, and the vital need to create a future that embraces the past.